corn, as well as from the limitation to the use of the master's mill and oven, when desiring to convert the corn into meal, or the meal into bread. The workman within the towns, too, exchanged services directly with his brother-workmen, like himself now free. The restraints upon the circulation of land, labor, and its products thus steadily diminishing, the motion of society became from year to year more rapid-with growing tendency to the development of the hidden treasures of the earth, and to the creation of local centres of activity, by means of which the centralizing effects of great landed estates, and of great trading cities, were to be further neutralized.

From age to age, we mark a growing tendency towards increasing the divisibility, and thus quickening the circulation, of fixed property. The stockholders of the East India Company are, in effect, proprietors of all the land of Hindostan, the right to a share in which is transferred by a simple entry on the books, and the delivery of a new certificate. The turnpikes and railroads of England are as fixed property as is the land on which they are laid; yet are they divisible into the smallest shares, the ownership of which is as readily transferred as is a bag of meal. Mines are opened at vast expense, the property in which is held in transferable shares. Till now, the English circulation has been everywhere retarded by the maintenance of a system of barbarous liabilities, handed down from olden time; but the general sentiment has recently found expression, in the passage of an act of Parliament, in virtue of which mills, factories, and furnaces may be built, and other descriptions of fixed property created, the ownership of which may be divided among thousands of persons circulating through society with a facility equal to that which attends the bag of cotton, and the circulating note. Each and every such step in the course of progress, is attended, necessarily, with an increase in the proportion of fixed property, and an augmentation of the facilities of commerce.

§ 4. The conclusions at which we now arrive may be briefly stated in the following propositions:

That, in the early period of society, all property is movable — land being wholly destitute of value :

That, of what is then regarded as property, the larger portion

consists of men, women, and children, who are denied the power to determine for themselves for whom they will work, or what shall be their reward:

That, as wealth augments and numbers increase, employments become diversified, with constant increase in the power to subject to cultivation the richer soils:

That, land now acquiring value, it becomes divided-its power of circulation increasing geometrically, as the work of division proceeds arithmetically:

That man acquires value, as the ruder products of the earth lose it increase in the proportion of fixed to movable property thus keeping steady pace with the growing freedom of man, and with the increase in the rapidity of the societary circulation:

That, thus, the more capital becomes fixed, the more rapid is the circulation of property of every description, whether consisting of land or of its products; the greater is the power of association; the more rapid is the development of individuality; and the greater is the power of further progress:

That, with every increase in the rapidity of circulation, local attraction becomes more and more complete; with increase in the individuality of families, towns, townships, and cities, and steady diminution in the centralizing forces by which societary action had previously been disturbed and

That, with every such increase, the community tends more and more to take upon itself that natural form in which strength and beauty are most combined, with constant increase in its own individuality, and in its power to associate with other communities on terms of strict equality.

§ 5. The course of things above described, being the natural one, the accuracy of the views thus presented, is proved by the records of every community of the world in which wealth and population have steadily advanced; and for the reason, that in all of them, the power of association has as steadily grown. The reverse effects are found in those in which population has diminished, as will now be shown.

* Value is obtained by a comparison with labor: Price, by a comparison with money. The value of the rude products declines as the price rises man then increasing in value as compared with silver, gold, and corn.

VOL. III.-6

Solon having provided for the distribution of land among the male heirs, and thus secured rapidity of circulation, the increase in the proportion of immovable property to that which was movable, was shown in extensive enfranchisements of slaves, while land grew steadily in value. The circulation of land and its products

of men and their services became more rapid from year to year until the occurrence of the Persian wars; with constant increase of local action. From that period, however, the proportion changed the movable property increasing in its proportions, until at length we find the land consolidated, with Herodes Atticus almost sole proprietor and sole improver in a country tilled by slaves circulation having ceased.

Lycurgus desired to assure to every Spartan an equal share of land. War and trade, however, produced a reverse effect. Slaves increased in number, but land declined in value, until it became consolidated in the hands of a few great families. Circulation

ceasing, all power was lost.

Rome, in the days of Servius, presented to view a numerous body of small proprietors cultivating the land they owned. Later, we find palaces owned by Scipios and Pompeys-the land having become consolidated, and the free proprietors having disappeared. Fixed property declined steadily in value, while slaves increased in number, and bankers in wealth and power. The circulation, however, had almost ceased - war and trade having done their work.

In Italy of the Middle Ages, we mark a constant increase in the variety of employments in the value of land and in the rapidity of circulation. Trade and war, however, becoming again the chief pursuits, whole populations were once more driven to seek in the labors of the field the only employment for their faculties, with constant increase in the proportion borne by floating capital to that which was fixed. Land gradually losing its value, it became again consolidated the Campagna, that once could boast its thirty prosperous cities, being now owned by two hundred and fifty persons; and Sicily, whose cities once ranked in civilization with those of Greece that were most distinguished, having become the property of a few great houses, and being occupied by a people to whom commerce is scarcely known.

Turning to Spain, we find a country that has, for centuries, been engaged in increasing the movable capital at the expense of that which was fixed. From the date of the expulsion of the enlightened, honest, and industrious Moors- the men whose labors were more diversified than those of any other European people— land had gradually lost its value, and had become consolidatedtwo-thirds of it having become the property of a few great nobles and the Church. The circulation of land, labor, or their products, having almost ceased, the laborer of Andalusia perished for want of food, while the silos of Castile were filled with corn, for which no market could be found. In Biscay, alone, the case was different-employment having there become diversified-the land being there held by small proprietors and the circulation. being rapid. Such, too, is now the tendency throughout the kingdom-the mass of the Church lands having been secularized and sold and the number of small proprietors having greatly increased, with great increase in the value of land, in the productiveness of agriculture, and in the rapidity of circulation.* The proportion borne by fixed to circulating capital is steadily advancing, with growing development of individuality, the preparation for further progress.

6. Nowhere in Northern Europe did employments so early become diversified as in the provinces now constituting Northern France and Belgium. Nowhere did cultivation so early pass from the poor to the rich soils. Nowhere did there exist so great a tendency to the division of the land; and nowhere, consequently, was the circulation so rapid, or the force so great.

In no part of Europe has the tendency to division of the land, as a consequence of the growth of wealth and population, been more fully and beautifully exhibited, than in the recent history of Denmark and her dependent duchies. The farmer and the artisan having there found places by each other's side, and the land being thus relieved from the oppressive tax of transportation, it grows in value rapidly. Fixed capital there increases steadily in

* At a quite recent sale of Church property, the prices were, as it is stated, thrice greater than had been anticipated-notwithstanding the large increase of value that previously had taken place. No more conclusive proof of advancing civilization can be presented, than that which is found in increase in the price, and division of the ownership, of land.

its proportions, with constant growth in the rapidity of the societary circulation.

The admirable effect of the division of land is fully shown in Prussia, by the result of the abolition of leases in perpetuity, and their conversion into freeholds, with compensation to the landowner, at the rate of five-and-twenty years' purchase of his interest. The great proprietors being heavily encumbered with. debts, their estates were covered with mortgages which effectually prevented improvement. In Pomerania, alone, the encumbrances amounted to $24,000,000. The peasant-holdings being freed at once, on payment of the stipulated sum, the small proprietors enjoyed a credit, that to the great ones had been denied. All other impediments to the free disposal of land, by sale, gift, or will, having been abolished, the effect is seen in the fact, that wealth and population are now advancing in Prussia, at a rate unknown to most of Continental Europe.*

Following in the same direction, Austria emancipates the peasants of Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary and Servia servile occupants of land being thus converted into free proprietors, and on terms resembling those on which the change was made in Prussia. Henceforth, consequently land and labor freely circulating the proportion borne by fixed to floating capital must rapidly increase.

§ 7. The more perfect the security of property, the more is its tendency to become permanently fixed. The less the security, the more does capital tend to remain unfixed and floating. Of all the countries of Europe, France has most labored to prevent the existence of that feeling of security, abroad or at home, which is required for securing the conversion of movable into fixed capital, and thus promoting rapidity of circulation. From the days of Pepin

"Professor Reichensperger says, that the rise in the price of small estates would have ruined the more recent purchasers, unless their productiveness had increased in at least an equal proportion; and as the small proprietors have been gradually becoming more and more prosperous, notwithstanding the increasing prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent justness, that this would seem to show that not only the gross profits of the small estates, but the net profits also, have been gradually increasing; and that the net profits per acre of land, when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre of land farmed by great proprietors."-KAY: Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. i. p. 116.